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“The Only Thing We Have to Fear…”

What FDR Was Really Saying

Rowan Hale's avatar
Rowan Hale
Mar 29, 2026
∙ Paid

There’s a line that drifts through our memory like an old lantern: the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Most people know the phrase, but fewer of us know where it came from, or what it was trying to do.

Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke these words in March 1933, at the height of the Great Depression. Banks were collapsing, unemployment was staggerin…

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